Empowering residents of communities near wind farms to record and document wind farm noise through the use of a phone app

Abstract

The impact of disturbances caused by wind farm noise (WFN) on residents can be difficult to predict. In talking with advocates for residents living near wind farms, it has become clear that some residents are negatively impacted by WFN, but the specific features that cause the greatest impacts are not well understood. A few studies have been published correlating in-home recordings of WFN with annoyance ratings by occupants in nearby residences, and some local municipalities have recorded SPLs at residences (such as an upstate NY town appointed volunteer noise officer who measures sound pressure levels on the property of concerned residents), but the vast majority of residents’ experiences go undocumented. In this talk, we will present a plan for using a cell phone app, “Auditive,” originally developed for collecting users’ responses to urban noise to provide residents living near wind farms with the opportunity to document their experiences with WFN while making simultaneous recordings. These recordings in conjunction with the user ratings will allow identification of qualitative aspects of WFN that cause the most annoyance from a large sample of individuals and may also provide a sense of agency for residents who are most negatively affected.